


Clouds Like Snowfields, England's Sky

by Ride_Forever



Category: Canadian Actor RPF (C6D), Canadian Six Degrees
Genre: Gift Exchange, Gift Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 05:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ride_Forever/pseuds/Ride_Forever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a ten-hour flight from Canada to England, Callum thinks about his relationships with Hugh and with Paul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clouds Like Snowfields, England's Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hazelwho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazelwho/gifts).



> My first-ever RPF _and_ first-ever RPS! I now go to special hell for the sake of [hazelwho](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hazelwho/pseuds/hazelwho), her C6D Midsummer Santa request having been Hugh Dillon / Callum Keith Rennie.
> 
> TYK to old_grognard for beta.
> 
> Lyrics to "When Something Stands for Nothing" written and copyrighted by The Headstones. No copyright infringement intended.
> 
> ======================

THE DAY OF THE FLIGHT :  
The KLM flight from Vancouver to the Newcastle Airport near Sunderland, England takes about thirteen hours…but Callum is leaving from Hugh’s house in Toronto, so it’s going to be the ten-hour KLM flight instead.

GETTING READY FOR TAKE-OFF :  
Right before the announcement to shut off all electronic devices, Callum makes two phone calls. First he calls Paul and tells him “Yeah, that movie, I’ll do it with you”. _Callum is not thinking of anything except the movie when he says “do it with you,” there’s nothing else that “do it with Paul” could mean to Callum…except there is._ Next he calls Hugh and says “Ya know what? It’s not always better to have fucked and lost than never to have fucked at all.”

THE FIRST HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
So now Callum’s heading for Sunderland…got the aisle seat on a ten-hour flight. Maybe the window seat wouldn’t be completely bad if there were something to see, but the view up here is cloudless sky and the view straight down is featureless water _and Callum is not thinking about that time underwater with Paul, not thinking about that…except he is._ The middle seat would be the worst – really boxed in – and that gets a harsh snort from Callum – boxed in, yeah, like the way his thoughts and desires make him feel boxed in between Hugh and Paul. 

THE SECOND HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
This flight offers open bar service, but Callum pays no attention to the flight attendant pushing the bar cart back and forth. He hasn’t touched alcohol since the summer of 1993; that eye injury –- that shard of glass driven into his left retina during the bar-room brawl -- went a long way towards shocking him sober, and he’s stayed sober ever since. _But what is there to do about how the thing between him and Hugh makes him feel like there’s a shard of glass driven into his brain?_

THE THIRD HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
Callum rubs his thumb over the Headstones ring on his index finger. He thinks back on having told people this trip to England was only about visiting some childhood places, some places that had figured in the life of his family until they moved to Canada when he was four…that reconnect-with-your-roots thing…but mostly it’s about Hugh…and about making himself distant enough that even if Hugh does get him thinking with his cock again, it won’t be so easy to act on it.

THE FOURTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
Slightly less than halfway through the flight he’s thinking about certain stories some of the fangirls write, that stuff they call slash. Some pretty hot shit between Joe Dick and Billy Tallent – and not too far off the mark from Hugh and Callum either – and also some pretty hot shit between Benton Fraser and Ray Kowalski– _yeah, Callum wishes._

THE FIFTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
Callum goes from thinking about that slash stuff to…thinking about _Paul_ thinking about that slash stuff. Hell, Paul had come right out and said in an interview “I tell you, slash fiction is going to go crazy when they see the new guy. He is really good-looking and sexy, the dangerous side of Fraser. It will be totally homoerotic.” And damn but Paul was so good at what he did you could get more than a little crazy with wondering what was acting and what wasn’t. Was all that talking Paul did about Callum -- that talk about “good-looking and sexy and dangerous and homoerotic” – just an impersonal assessment meant as a tease for the press and the fans? Callum had felt like _he_ was being teased, but he never let on to Paul that it wasn’t only the slash fans who were getting their HoYay buttons pushed by Paul.

THE SIXTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
Hugh and Callum get the primal things about each other, Callum thinks, as he’s thought over and over whenever he lets himself wonder why this keeps happening with him and Hugh…this push-pull friendship with the lust mixed into it. Mostly that’s a good thing, the knowing and being known…yeah, mostly it’s a good thing, except when it _isn’t._ Because some of what Callum knows about Hugh means they’ll never be more than fuck buddies…and Callum gets an ache and a restlessness when he thinks about the difference between fuck buddies and buddy breathing. No, not going to think about shooting that underwater scene with the buddy breathing, not going to think about that one time Paul’s mouth was on his -- _not going to think about that…except he is._

THE SEVENTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
The guy in the seat next to Callum has finally fallen asleep after hours of remarking again and again that he’s exhausted, that he hopes he’ll fall asleep but has trouble with sleeping on planes. Callum had wanted to say “yeah, and I have trouble sleeping on planes when there’s a guy next to me who keeps on telling me about his trouble with sleeping on planes”.

THE EIGHTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
Callum falls asleep. 

THE NINTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
Callum’s sleep deepens, and he dreams. It’s a rough-sex dream, Hugh and him, lots of _motion_ but no EMOTION -- and then Hugh starts singing “When Something Stands for Nothing”. Does it indeed stand for nothing that Callum dreams of the first single from the first album? Does it indeed stand for nothing that he dreams of a song about dreams : “…about everything you don’t think about until you sleep”? 

_“When something stands for nothing, a detached memory…this one’s about everything you don’t think about until you sleep…this one’s for nothing and this one’s for fun…and each day offers something, but none of it’ll last….”_

THE TENTH HOUR OF THE FLIGHT :  
The plane is beginning its descent, and Callum wakes to a view of clouds that look like snowfields in England’s sky. He thinks of Paul -- Paul’s Fraser -- standing in a vast snowfield -- and he recalls himself -- his Kowalski self -- saying “we’re a hundred miles from nowhere in a frozen wasteland and you’re grinning like an idiot” -- and he thinks of that rapt smile, the EMOTION in Paul’s voice when he says “I’m home”. And like the ice roads giving way to the Spring melt, something in Callum that had seemed solid because it was frozen gives way in the rising warmth.

There’s another phone call that Callum knows he’ll be making to Paul as soon as the plane lands.

_“…and each day offers something, but none of it’ll last unless you take the reins, take them from the knight…push the pawn through the pass…and this one’s for the silence and the questions that it brings, and the smell of time and the reverence and the possibilities….”_


End file.
